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Adam is five years old, and he’s hunting down ants on the sidewalk. People skirt around him - most ignore him, some stare at his stubby black horns, and a few look around for any sign of parents. He ignores all of them in favor of the black specks at his feet. He takes out a pair of glasses that he stole from Sister Cheruse’s desk, focusing the beam on one speck. It twitches as it folds in on itself, glowing with tiny flames. There’s a spark in his chest, and he wonders if it feels like that.
“Adam?! Adam! Adam, get back here!” A hand grabs his arm, hauling him backwards. “What do you - oh my Gods, you little brat.”
Adam is eight years old, and he’s facing off against a portly, older human boy. In his mind, it should be something out of the fairy tale books that were read to him at night - a young man standing up for his fellow orphan, who the bully just pushed over. But there’s flames in his chest that he doesn’t remember in the story. He wants to break the boys hammy little fingers, and that doesn’t seem right.
Maybe the boy reads the danger in the blue eyes. Or maybe he’s just a coward. Either way, he backs up, eyes round as saucers and lower lip trembling.
Adam feels like the tallest boy in the world. The flame in his chest dances.
Adam is twelve years old, and he’s not afraid of the letters S.D.C. yet. The four other faunus he’s in the car with are shivering and whispering rumors about the company that just ‘adopted’ them. How they were adopted because no one else wanted them. How faunus are forced to work in the mines. How faunus are beaten if they don’t behave.
Adam isn’t afraid because he’s heard rumours too. He hasn’t learned to hate humans yet, but he has learned that he can hurt people that hurt him. He’s learned the fire in his chest is growing, searing the inside of his ribcage. He’s learned that the burning feels good. He feels like that should scare him.
The tall man closes the car door.
Adam is fourteen and he needs to sleep, but he wants to bite but hasn’t found a target yet. All the rumours are true, but he can’t find a way to hurt back. The guards are too tall, too fast, too intimidating. He can find relief in the hard labour of hauling carts of dust back and forth, but it’s not the same, and it isn’t enough. The fire in his chest doesn’t scare him anymore, but it does frustrate him. It’s a burning, an itching, a desire that eats at him even when his bones are sore and drained.
The guard that is supposed to lock the door to their sleeping quarters stumbles by in a drunken haze. Adam listens intently, waiting for quiet, before he rolls off his cot and steps out.
He can hear an elderly faunus yelp, somewhere down the hall. An old man who had fallen this morning and was pulled away when he could not get back up. He doesn’t feel himself walking until he’s standing in the doorway, watching two guards beat the now motionless man. The room reeks of sweat, of piss, of alcohol.
He remembers the fat bully. He remembers the fear in his eyes.
The fire is burning, raging, furious, and Adam decides that it’s anger. He decides that the fire is telling him to help, to protect. That it means the fire is good, that the fire should be listened to.
Adam steps forwards. The guards are drunk, their steps are unsteady, and Adam is strong and smart and molten. They fall at his feet, and they look like ants.
Adam is fourteen and he doesn’t know to scrub blood out from under his fingernails, or to hide his face when the guards carry their wounded comrades by his bed. Even if he had known, he was one of the strongest youths in the group of workers, and there weren’t many other suspects to blame.
He’s dragged out in front of everyone. There’s a forge with a metal pole sticking out, a bucket of water, and a man, face lined with scars, looking down at him. He asks, in a soft voice like the sisters from the orphanage, if Adam regretted what he’d done.
Adam can’t hear him, can’t think, can’t breathe, because the fire has reached his throat and all he wants is every guard in the room on the ground, burning like ants. There’s fear, there’s lots of fear, and maybe even some regret, but they’re far away. Like his own emotions are watching him burn from the horizon and can’t reach him.
He raises his head and spits in the scarred face.
The man doesn’t flinch. He looks almost sad. Then he turns and grabs the pole sticking out of the fire.
The brand pushes into his left eye, and Adam sees an inferno.
Adam is sixteen and the world makes much more sense now. He hasn’t lifted his head, hasn’t tried to hurt anyone, but he’s learned hatred and it’s helped. The fire has burned through his diaphragm and into his gut, but he knows to keep it secret. The guards still give him a wide berth, years later, still whisper about how ‘the bull’ attacked two people in cold blood. But the bull never stirs, never blinks, never surfaces, and the guards assume that he’s gone into a dormant state, traumatized by the open wound on his face.
Until the day the mine shakes, and rebel faunus rush in. He hears panic and fear, hears guards rushing to his cart to get away, and the fire rises. He’s never heard of a semblance before, but when he uses a long red dust crystal to deflect a bullet, it sends a rush of power up his arm.
The White Fang rebels are surprised when they reach them. Surprised at the sight of the scarred, motionless boy clutching a red dust crystal, and the unconscious guards around him. One of them, orange and black ears perked in the way that a confident leader does, steps towards him. A striped arm and piercing yellow eyes gesture him to follow, and he does.
Adam Taurus is seventeen and he’s eager to go back to the mine. Sienna acts surprised, but he thinks that she’s not. Not when he’s trained so hard, so fast. Not when he’s polished the dust crystal into a katana and fused the leftover dust into his hair and clothes. Not when he’s taken a last name from the cruel nickname the guards had given him.
She gives him a mask, perfectly fitted to his face, and tells him that it’s so that the humans know that they don’t own him. He likes that. Then Sienna looks through him, like she always has, and tells him to focus on protecting the faunus, not taking revenge. He agrees, because the fire can do that for him. He is protecting the faunus.
But the awe in the faces of his former co-slaves isn’t nearly as sweet as the terror in the faces of his former tormentors.
Adam Taurus is eighteen, and he’s watching Ghira Belladonna’s expression carefully. He keeps the mask on all the time now, because he likes the fact that his own expression can’t be read as easily. Ghira asks, again, for Adam to keep a close eye on his daughter. Adam agrees, again.
Then, finally, Ghira moves out of the way, and Adam Taurus sees Blake Belladonna for the first time.
She’s small, as small as he was when the Schnee Dust Company took him, but she stands like her spine is forged of iron. She stares up at his mask, and she looks through him, like Sienna does.
Ghira watches the two shake hands, and Adam knows he isn’t happy about the choice of mentor for his daughter. But Adam is.
Adam Taurus is nineteen, and he’s watching Ghira and Kali Belladonna walk away. Blake stands by his side, and she’s still made of iron but he can feel the fear and pain rising off of her. He’s been her mentor for months now, and she looks through him but she can’t see him.
Once they’re out of sight, out of reach, out of mind, he takes her hand. There’s a tremble in his voice when he asks her to promise that she’ll stay with him. It’s a real tremble, but it’s not the same kind as hers when she agrees.
The fire swirls inside him, whipped into a frenzy, and Adam is glad for the mask because he can feel smoke behind his eyes.
Adam Taurus is twenty-one and he’s watching Blake Belladonna pace back and forth. She’s grown, she’s beautiful, and he shouldn’t want to rip her apart but he does. He wants to see her from the inside out, he wants to watch her break in his hands and then put her back together the way she needs to be.
The fire is consuming him, to the point where he feels that he is just a furnace wearing a skin, and he knows what it wants but he doesn’t know what it is anymore. This isn’t anger, this isn’t about protecting the faunus, but he’s never felt it burn as hot as it is now.
She turns to look at him, and he remembers he’s not wearing the mask. She looks through him, and he wonders if she can see the smoke now.
Blake asks him what he’s looking at. She blushes when he replies “You.”
Somewhere on the horizon, an emaciated emotion he’s long forgotten weeps.
Adam Taurus is twenty-two, and he can see that Blake’s iron spine is corroding. Sienna looks at him for too long sometimes, but he’s grown confident that the fire is invisible. Ilia Amitola looks at Blake for too long sometimes, but he’s not concerned.
Sometimes Blake’s spine straightens again, when they’re alone and no one can hear. But he can see she isn’t on fire, not like he is. It frustrates him, because she should be more like him by now. Maybe she’s too cowardly, or too spoiled, maybe she hasn’t seen enough of the world’s cruelty.
So he puts her in her place every time she backtalks. He reminds her that she’s still weak. Still naive. Still stupid. Every nervous twitch of her ears, every shifted eye, every uncertain tremble in her voice feeds the inferno, sends molten lava coursing through his limbs.
He has to remind himself that it’s for her own good, so she’ll become a better warrior. For the good of the faunus.
He doesn’t believe it anymore.
Adam Taurus is twenty-three, and he’s gotten so used to no one seeing him that he’s forgotten that he might not be able to see everything.
Because he wasn’t expecting to see Blake Belladonna detach the train car.
He wasn’t expecting to hear her voice, remarkably steady, say “Goodbye.”
The wind whipping through his hair is cold, and the fire feels far away for a moment. Adam realizes, in the moment that it’s gone, that he can’t feel anything else.
Adam Taurus is twenty-three, and he’s staring at a woman with fire spouting from her eyes and spouting from her hands, and he knows he has to agree, to work with the humans.
He knows he should hate this. It’s not for the faunus.
But he doesn’t hate it as much as he should, because the fire is back and now it’s an inferno, and it wants to be fed something, anything.
Adam Taurus is twenty-three, and for the first time in his life the inferno is starting to hurt. The faunus he’s responsible for are dying and being imprisoned for something that isn’t their cause, and he can hear screaming on the horizon but it’s too far away to make out the words. He can blame Cinder Fall, but he can’t bite her. Not like he wants to.
He thinks of Blake, and how the inferno would focus on her when she was around. How the searing felt good in his chest.
It’s not just smoke behind his eye anymore.
Adam Taurus is twenty-three, and Blake Belladonna is smaller than he remembered. Beacon Academy looks like the inside of his chest, and the human blood he’s spilled feels good but not like this. Not like the fear in her eyes when he knocks her down. Not like the terror when he vows to tear apart everything she loves.
Maybe it’s fate that he hears a human calling her name right at that moment. He sees Blake’s horror, and he’s enraged, but he’s happy. Because now he can destroy her and the inferno knows it.
Blake yelps as Wilt plunges into her abdomen. The blonde human girl screams at him, and from across the room, he watches her burst into flames. But she burns golden, like the sun, like the faint memories of books the sisters would read him.
The bloody inferno wants to rip the golden girl apart.
She charges at him, and he does.
Adam Taurus is twenty-four, and Sienna is looking through him again, and he knows the fire isn’t invisible anymore, if it ever really was. But he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t need to hide it anymore. Hazel’s presence at his side isn’t comforting so much as liberating, because Adam can convince himself that the inferno is on the faunus’ side now. He’s imagining himself towering over the humans, burning them one by one with stolen glasses.
Sienna is surprised to see her guards turn against her. Adam tells himself it’s because she’s blind, because she doesn’t see what he does.
He’s tired of her yellow eyes glaring through him, like Blake’s did.
The inferno roars as Sienna falls down the steps, drowns out Hazel’s disapproval, drowns out Adam’s own reasoning.
Adam Taurus is twenty-four, and he doesn’t understand. He was working with Hazel, who in turn worked with Salem - the near-mythical ancient deity that should have absolute control.
How had a plan contrived by such powerful people be overthrown by one slender girl with twitching black ears?
He’s watching Hazel run off with Cinder’s two underlings. He thinks of following them.
Instead, he limps back towards the temple, fingertips twitching as they sear.
Adam Taurus is twenty-four, and he thinks he does understand.
The last of the White Fang lays slaughtered around him. He doesn’t try to tell himself that they left him no choice. He doesn’t try to tell himself that this is for the good of the faunus.
He doesn’t need a reason anymore. He is the inferno - or, perhaps more accurately, the inferno is him. And as he slices the throne Sienna once ruled from, he knows that the inferno only wants one thing.
He wants eyes round as saucers, backing away from him and shaking, and he wants ants burning on the ground.
Adam thinks of twitching black ears.
Adam Taurus is twenty-four, and he’s waited far too long. He’s hidden his face with cloth, because the mask is as recognizable as his face now, and it’s harder to see out of but it works. The girl that burns golden is reluctant to let Blake go on her own, but Blake convinces her to.
The inferno is growing too big for his body, and he can feel the pressure increasing on his ribcage as he sees the soft look Blake gives her partner. The voices on the horizon are faint, but annoying, and as he silently follows her he blocks them out.
Adam Taurus is twenty-four, and the inferno has exploded. He’s fighting her, chasing her, fighting again, and can she do anything besides run?! His screams are like bullets - some seem to miss her, but he can see some of them hit in her missed strides, the brief flashes of fear in her face. It’s a process, like he’s breaking her down all over again, and it’s frustrating but cathartic.
It takes him a while, but he gets her there. On the ground, unarmed, scar from the night at Beacon exposed. The roaring is duller, for a moment, and Adam finally pulls off the cloth.
He wants her to be alone. He wants her to be scared. He wants the searing pain in his chest to feel good again.
Adam isn’t expecting the roar of a motorcycle. He isn’t expecting the hit to knock him sideways, away from her.
Of course it’s her. Her name is Yang, her right arm is iron and he can feel her burning hotter than he could ever manage. Blake looks at her the same way she used to look at Adam, when she was small and he was still a hero.
What’s even worse is that Yang looks at Blake the same way.
Everything they do is an insult, a personal attack, a reminder. They give him a chance, too many chances to walk away. They don’t want him to die, but they don’t want to die either.
Yang staggers back as he asks - screams - what Blake saw in her. But he knows - he knows Blake could always see the fire. Adam knows that he’s a burning house, a wildfire, a destructive and bloody force that Blake learned to fear. He knows that Yang is a campfire, a controlled burn, a destructive but benevolent force that Blake learned to trust.
Adam just wants the searing in his chest to stop.
Adam doesn’t know how old he is. He doesn’t know how much time has passed. He’s on his knees, feeling smoke leak from the two holes in his chest.
He can see the inferno. It’s still blazing, consuming everything in its path. But now he’s watching from the horizon, and he can hear the dying voice of his own emotions.
He wonders if he should hear regret. Or anger.
He doesn’t. Because even from a distance, he is the fire. He always was.
There’s pain as he falls, but it fades.
The inferno finally extinguishes as he hits the water. He feels it seep into him through the holes in his chest, and it feels like relief, like the moment the brand was pulled away from his face.
The water grows a voice. It remembers the books the sisters read him. It remembers ‘for the faunus’. It remembers that the fire wasn’t always all of him.
Adam wonders if things would have been different if something had extinguished the spark in his chest, when he was burning ants with stolen glasses.
The water whispers, “there’s always something to burn.”